home >> MS_A_home >> MS_M_EarthSciences

Geography/Geology

College Learning Outcomes:

  1. Written, Oral and Visual Communication: Communicate effectively in writing, orally and/or visually using traditional and/or modern information resources and supporting technology.
  2. Scientific and Quantitative Reasoning: Locate, identify, collect, and organize data in order to then analyze, interpret or evaluate it using mathematical skills and/or the scientific method.
  3. Critical Thinking: Differentiate between facts, influences, opinions, and assumptions to reach reasoned and supportable conclusions.
  4. Problem Solving: Recognize and identify the components of a problem or issue, look at it from multiple perspectives and investigate ways to resolve it.
  5. Information Literacy: Formulate strategies to locate, evaluate and apply information from a variety of sources - print and/or electronic.

Links to each sub-section

GEOGRAPHY: MS_ES_Geography
GEOLOGY: MS_ES_Geology

List of degrees and certificates in each area

GEOGRAPHY: A.S. and Transfer
GEOLOGY: A.S. and Transfer


DON'T FORGET TO SAVE!!!

First: Please rank on a scale of 1 to 5 (5=high) - how important each of these general outcomes are to the various parts of their areas in a matrix as follows:

Effective
Communication


Scientific or
Quantitative
Reasoning


Critical
Thinking
Problem Solving




Information
Literacy

Geography
5

3

4




2
Geology
5

5

3




2















Next: Look at what your discipline has written previously about Discipline specific SLOs. How do these compare to each of general college learning outcomes above?

  1. By the end of the semester all academically successful students exiting our program will be able to apply the general principles of the science of Geology to discuss in specific detail the sequence of events and relative age of the rocks that collectively define the geological history of a particular terrain.
  2. All student exiting this program will be able to discuss the basic components of the Unfying Theory Plate Tectonics and will be able to relate the significance of this theory to all investigations of Earth.
  3. All students exiting our program will be able to discuss the role of geologist in society.

LIFE AND EARTH SCIENCES Problem Solving and Critical Thinking SLO (from 2005)
In our department we teach students to approach problem solving by:

  • clarifying the problem or question, and if necessary, breaking it apart into manageable sub-questions
  • discerning and describing factors that are relevant to the problem and doing appropriate observation and data collection
  • coming up with a possible solution and being able to explicitly state what evidence or line of thinking led to that particular outcome
  • understanding and making peace with the idea that science can never give an absolute answer to any question
  • understanding that scientific problem-solving is not always a linear process
  • having the ability and being willing to go back and revise earlier steps in their problem-solving process as they learn more
  • being aware of and amenable to peer review (the scrutiny of their work by others skilled in the field) and also being aware that any of their results and conclusions should be reproducible.


Think about how these programmatic SLOs relate to the College Learning Outcomes above. Feel free to edit, expand or change them. Try to make a program SLO for each College Learning Outcome with scores of 3 or higher on the matrix.